Abortion Amendment (updated below - Update II - Update III)

I'm probably having a senior moment, but can someone explain to me how the abortion amendment to the health care reform (HCR) bill works?

What I think I'm not understanding is, if you are a conservative Dem or a GOP member and you don't really want HCR to pass, but if it does pass you want an abortion restriction included in the bill, doesn't that mean that in voting for the amendment you are actually voting for the bill? What application does the amendment, separated from the HCR bill itself, have? The HCR bill and the amendment would seem to go hand in hand. I'm not getting how the Repubs/conserv Dems could have their anti-choice amendment attached to a HCR bill they didn't vote for.

Thanks for your patience.

Update: I think I get this now. Once upon a time I think understood that this is how it worked, that amendment votes were separate from final passage votes, but it just didn't compute for me today. It's pretty effed up that a gang of misanthrops aided and abetted by the majority party, can muck up a bill and then walk away from it without facing any accountability for the final product.

Update II: An Andrew Sullivan reader highlights the abortion-restriction procedures already included in the bill before the amendment was passed, and what added restrictions the amendment demands. It's becoming more and more clear what a poison pill this amendment was.

Update III: Via Digby, Americablog asks an intriguing question of anti-choice congresscritters who receive insurance lobby money.

Bill Kristol says Obama is doing fine

"Like [name of big-state governor], the president has taken on a string of big issues--[Afghanistan], a drastic foreign-policy overhaul, judges, plus [health care]--with predictable results. These are issues that generate political conflict. They upset settled practice, rile various institutions, stir strong opposition, and keep poll ratings low. For an activist president, lack of popularity is part of the package. "

"Crossing the finish line of his presidency with record low popularity may turn out to be a sign of substantive achievement and lasting reform."

(H/t Sullivan)

CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS

Ten years ago this very day.

Mob rule

A mob of angry African-American men have descended on Capitol Hill and have set seige to the offices of good, upstanding members of Congress, trying to scare them into passing a new massive health care entitlement.

Oh wait.

Seriously. I'm not sure TPM is really being helpful by giving the mob this kind of attention.

I am trying to imagine, though, what the Village reaction would be to a crowd of 2,000 or so African-American men descending on Capitol Hill to try to "scare" members of Congress.

"Laws are only temporary for gays"

John Cole aptly captures the disappointment and frustration stemming from the loss in Maine:

I honestly don’t know where the gay rights movement goes from here. There have been some recent successes- there seems to be some movement on DADT, an openly gay mayor was elected in North Carolina, Washington state passed a gay rights bill, Obama signed the Shephard legislation, the HIV ban was lifted, and some other victories in other states in recent years. At the same time, I understand (as much as I can) the anger and the frustration. They did the right things- they had bills passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, followed the legitimate political process, and unlike any other civil rights issue, laws are only temporary for gays and a year later it gets overturned in referendums. It has to be maddening, and I have no answers...at this point I can’t think anything other than that they have every right to be pissed. I don’t know if it will work, but maybe the only recourse left for the gay rights movement is legitimate anger. Nothing else seems to be working.

The Hoover Recovery

A Dow Jones of 10,000 (Dow 36,000!!!) has apparently inspired a new conservative meme.

What about all that out of control government spending? I thought the stimulus bill was supposed to kill the economy?

More good news for John McCain

The Senate Finance Committee health reform vote seems to have convinced some conservatives it's time to accept the idea that some type of reform bill will pass but that it will be a spectacular FAIL:

Megan McArdle: I think it is more likely is that [healthcare] passes, and fails spectacularly. There are too many moving parts, and if any of them breaks, the whole thing rapidly starts to spin out of control and eat a gigantic hole in the deficit. If it does break, I think that Democrats keep control of Congress just long enough to explain why they keep having to enact whopping new tax increases every few years. Republicans don't need to improve their message. They just have to wait for Democrats to recover their reputation as tax and spend politicians who woefully underpredict the cost of everything they propose.

So McArdle argues that health reform, if it passed, would likely fail on the basis of its....increasing the deficit? Am I understanding that right? Even if higher than anticipated deficits were to result after the reform, from the reform or other causes, and even if a majority of the American public were to notice and care about that, what exactly would the Republican Party propose to do about it? More tax cuts--in 2013 at the soonest? End the reform--in 2013 at the soonest--and throw more people back onto the uninsured rolls?

November 2009

That's when my Washington Post subscription expires. I was already thinking of not renewing it. More offensive and irrational tripe like this will make that an easier decision to make.

Seriously, I have been a big newspaper reader for two decades, sometimes reading as many as three papers a day, though most often, two major dailies. Currently I get both the Washington Post and the New York Times delivered. But I'm getting burned out or fed up or both with all the shit in them. The Times is by far the better paper in my estimation. And sometimes the Post manages to put something informative in its main section. But all the political back and forth between the parties, the various partisan ideologues and spin-meisters each employs to provide "balance" is just getting aggravating.

The Will piece in particular just has no meaning whatsoever. It's just garbage. Why am I paying for this and allowing it to fill up my house for recycling?

Reconsidering newspapers

We already know about the wit and wisdom of the Washington Post's inglorious editorial page. And while this guy has never bothered me all that much, I am getting pretty effin sick of crap like this. Basically, we had a summer full of the inmates from the insane asylum running wild with guns and threats, trying to shut down the process of reasonable political discourse in this country, but somehow the president's going on the media's array of Sunday blab shows constitutes overexposure? WTF?

Maybe in the future we can just subscribe to the Sports section. Or maybe not.

Numbers

On page A10 of its paper Thursday, the Wash Post has a table entitled "The Bills Compared". I was unable to find the same table on-line, so it may only be available in hard copy. But the table's notes say its information was compiled by its staff and taken from information provided by the CBO, the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate HELP Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the latter three Committees having produced legislation.

Anyway, one feature of the table was to show how many persons are projected to still be uninsured in 2019. The House bill, with a price-tag of $1.3 trillion over ten years would reduce the number of projected insured from 54 million in 2019 to 17 million. And the House bill includes a public option. The Baucus bill, which costs almost half that of the House bill ($774 bill), and notably does not include a public option, would leave 25 million uninsured in 2019, eight million more than the House bill. The Senate HELP Committee's bill, which also includes a public option, would leave the most uninsured, 36 million, in 2019, although its costs over ten years would be only $645 bill, almost $100 bill less than the Baucus bill.

So, each of these bills would improve the number of insured persons, which is expected to increase from the 44 or 45 million or so persons uninsured today. But these bills would cost quite a bit and still leave millions uninsured. More specifically, compared to the House bill, these figures indicate it would require legislation nearly twice as expensive as the Baucus bill to get 8 million more persons insured in 2019. Granted, eight million people is still a lot, but it doesn't seem to me that another $600+ billion provides much bang for the buck.

It's possible I'm missing something here; that the long term effects of these proposals compared to doing nothing would continually decrease the numbers of uninsured, and that this longer term effect isn't reflected in these tables. But that would suggest that the substantive impact of these bills in improving access would be much delayed. If so, that point hasn't been made abundantly clear.

But for all the political flack health reform has stirred up, none of these bills really "wow" me. And I'm still waiting for the opponents of Reform to get really pissed off at the idea of individual mandates. But that would of course imply that opponents are interested in substantive issues.

If it's Thursday

It must be anti-Chavez day at the Washington Post.

Also, how can the juvenile delinquents in the back of the room simultaneously wave placards with the words "What Plan?" or "What Bill" written on them while also, in regards to the much trumpeted death panels, yell at the President to "read the bill"?

Signs of Optimism

Because unlike 1993-1994 when no real health care legislation was working its way through congress, this year health care legislation has already cleared several committees and is about to clear its final one.

In addition, current health care reform polling deserves some important qualifying, namely that, the important thing is that voters approve of a final reform bill's goals, not an imaginery one.

No Mandate without a Public Option

There have a couple of posts to this regard at the Great Orange Satan in recent days but it bears repeating that forcing people to buy insurance (the Mandate)--which was the Hilary position in the campaign and which Obama at the time opposed and which I'm not crazy about for a variety of reasons--without providing a low-cost public option is illogical, blatantly unfair, and maybe even unconstitutional.

That there today (a) exists a private market for individual insurance and that (b) few people go for this private sector, free-market "option", should give policymakers pause about requiring people to buy into it without a low-cost, regulated public option.

The Rationing We Have

Steven Pearlstein rips Michael Steele's face off:

Indeed, Republicans seem determined to preserve the uniquely American system under which health care is rationed today -- on the basis of employment status and ability to pay. According to the respected Institute of Medicine, this market-based approach to rationing has held the number of untimely deaths each year to a mere 18,000 uninsured souls. Thanks to Medicare, all of those victims are younger than 65, but apparently that is the kind of age-based rationing that real Republicans can embrace.

After reading his broadside, one is left wondering exactly what health reform plan Steele thought he was attacking. At one point, Steele claims that Democrats would prevent Americans from keeping their doctors or an insurance plan they like. Later, he warns that government will soon be setting caps on how many heart surgeries could be performed in the United States each year. Where is he getting this stuff? Has the chairman of the Republican Party somehow gotten hold of a top-secret plan for a government takeover of the health-care system that GOP operatives snatched during a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters?

If all that sounds spurious and unsubstantiated, it is. And like many of the overstated claims in this column, its purpose is to highlight the lies, distortions and political scare tactics that Steele and other Republicans have used to poison the national debate over health reform.

Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?

Stuff I Wish I'd Written

If we make 9/11 a national day of service, that means the terrorists will have won.

This private-public, civilian army of phone-bankers and envelope-stuffers sounds pretty teh awesome, though.

What Booman Said

Vote for cloture or lose your Chairs.

Now, this isn't so hard to understand, is it?

If it's Monday...

It must be anti-Chavez day at the Washington Post.

But I'm confused, or maybe I'm just missing something.

Isn't the very pro American Colombian president--or at least his honchos in his rubber-stamp legislature--trying to ram through a constitutional amendment to allow him to run again, for a third consecutive term, which is unconstitutional?

Shouldn't we be supporting a military coup in Colombia to prevent such an undemocratic and unconstitutional thing from happening, like we did in Hondurus?

How could The Post not have thought to mention this to us?

Unhinged

Atrios:

Getting Scarier

SoCal:

WESTWOOD -- A man accused of making threats against the White House led officers on a wild freeway chase that ended in a standoff outside the Federal Building.

MD:

The Secret Service is investigating a man who authorities said held a sign reading "Death to Obama" outside a town hall meeting on health-care reform in western Maryland.

The sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids," referring to the first name of President Barack Obama's wife, said Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich.

Dangerous and also super classy.

---------------------------------

But I'm sure that swastika outside that congressperson's office was a fake.

Not Interested in Governing

That, I think, is the basic mind-set behind the townhalls, the worldview promulgated by hate radio, Faux TV, and the various astroturf freedomworks groups for the last ten years and beyond. It manifested itself, of course, in a variety of ways during the W presidency, Katrina and the occupation of Iraq being only the most disasterous examples.

The only legitimate use of government for this crowd consists almost exclusively of starting wars and harranging liberals, academics, uncoverted Hollywood actors, immigrants, secularists, and other perceived unpersons. Beyond that, there just simply isn't any interest in addressing the realities of the modern world.

Ezra Klein's column gets at this somewhat, as well.

What Matt Yglesias Said

Big Media Matt:

...Watching McCaskill on TV what I mostly thought of was that I don’t understand why members of congress are holding these town halls. There’s been so much focus on the spectacle of the whole thing that nobody’s really stepped back and explained what the purpose of these events are other than to give us pundits something to chat about. Obviously this is not a good way of acquiring statistically valid information about your constituents’ opinions. And it doesn’t seem like a mode of endeavor likely to increase the popularity of the politician holding the town hall. The upside is extremely limited, and you’re mostly just exposing yourself to the chance that something could go wrong.

I know this is a relatively older post, and with the townhalls that horse is already out of the barn or whatever.

Anyway, this has been another edition of What Matt Yglesias Said.